SBIR-STTR Award

Propulsion Health Management (PHM) is viewed by the Air Force as a critical technology for improving aircraft system affordability via reduced maintenance costs, and improved platform survivability and availability . Ideally, PHM eliminates "surprises" in operations and maintenance. DSPCon proposes to develop a powerful, modular, expandable, open-standards addition of processing capability that will increase the speed of PHM decisions by an order of magnitude over current Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC)-based hardware and software. It is anticipated that PHM decisions representing accurate fault isolation with a low probability of false alarm are needed every 20 msec. Through the use of optimized signal processing algorithms and commercially available high speed hardware, the DSPCon platform will provide a greatly improved computational capability over current PHM solutions. The DSPCon platform will accommodate anticipated PHM requirements including sensor data rates of 200kHz or more, and data bus rates of 100 megabits per second or more. DSPCon will consult with major jet turbine engine manufacturers throughout the program to ensure a comprehensive understanding of PHM requirements for gas-turbine engines.

Keywords:
Next Generation Prognostic Propulsion Health Management Architecture

DSPCon is developing a powerful, modular, expandable, open-standards addition of processing capability for Propulsion Health Management (PHM) that will increase the speed with which PHM decisions can be made by an order of magnitude over current Full Authority Digital Electronic Control (FADEC) hardware and software. DSPCon’s goal for the Phase II effort is to develop, test, and demonstrate a prototype PHM processing unit that implements significant capability improvements over current FADEC hardware. These improvements are that the new processor processes data at 10 times the speed of the FADEC hardware, can accommodate sensor data rates of up to 200 KHz, and can produce PHM actionable decisions every 20 msec. With the development of this new PHM processor platform, DSPCon will fill a vital gap that currently exists in the PHM community, namely the lack of significant processing power to handle large amounts of data collected from sensors monitoring the engine and the data processing required to generate useful PHM information, in a timely manner, using numerically intensive algorithms. The new PHM processor platform is designed to be embedded on an aircraft as well as serve as a development platform for advanced research in PHM algorithms.

Benefits:
Due to the algorithm development surplus in the past 10-15 years by a variety of small & large companies; the market and need for an advanced PHM processing platform that can handle the most numerically intensive algorithms is well defined. There are a number of algorithms such as those that are model based, data driven, and hybrid that have shown a significant value added contribution but cannot be implemented due to the extensive processing capability that is needed. DSPCon is confident that the product that will be derived from the PH II effort will have the ability to satisfy this processing issue. The number of applications for the proposed system is quite vast and stretches into the military and commercial aircraft sectors in addition to applicability in PHM applications in both military and commercial ground and air vehicles.

Keywords:
Prognostic Health Management, Phm, Embedded System, Algorithms, Modular, Processor, Fpga